If I see something in an instant, I replay in my head the sequence to make sense of or identify events. I suppose most of you do the same. For example, David J Zaharychuk, my first dive instructor turned Thai farmer, would attest to the possibility of the following. Once diving a beautiful coral wall I looked into the murk along the wall, my visibility range was probably 25m, when suddenly I saw the face of a big shark coming at me and then just as suddenly I saw its tail disappear, back from whence it came. I had no time for fear or shock, I was momentarily unmoved by it. Then it knocked me back and I swam wildly up to my buddy and made the shark symbol and the international fisherman's signal for 'bloody huge!'. For the rest of the dive I was playing it over and over in my head, trying to determine how close I came to death. My conclusion was the shark saw me before, or as I saw him and he turned about face to avoid the confrontation. I estimated size of his tail was about my shoulder height. Which would make him three or four meters long. That white face and shaped tail, it was a White Pointer, a Great White Shark. The most feared and hunted of all sharks, pointers are the ones The Discovery Channel makes the docos about.
At this point, I must cut the narrative and say I, in no way expect you to believe me about the size of the shark, or even the level of danger I was in. It is as I remember it and no more. I could, and probably am, wrong about both. Whereas I cannot imagine it was half that size, but if it was, it could have still taken an arm or leg. But would it? I always say that sharks don't attack divers, we are not their favourite food. The truth is that sometimes they do. But if road safety campaigners could get the road deaths down to these numbers, they would be ecstatic. Every diver I know or knew, would be disappointed not to see one where others did. They are extraordinarily beautiful animals, we just love to see them.
Now, of course it is just a memory and subject to my failing faculties. But it got added to one of those special memory categories reserved for life and death situations. At almost sixty years old I have faced death three times and lived! Each one was just as terrifying, but only in retrospect. There was no time for fear in the moment. All three times, I just watched, acted and waited to see what would happen.
[Oh and don't believe the myth that sharks have to keep swimming to breathe, I have seen one motionless for minutes on the sandy seabed. We divers were peering over the top of a rock and cursing our bubbles.]
Monday, March 31, 2014
The Passion of the Nun
At university I had a lecturer in Industrial law who would tell us stories in the break between hour long lectures. The only one I remember is how he met and married a catholic nun. He said that he caught her as she metaphorically jumped the convent wall and thereafter had to deal with 25 years of pent up passion!
Normal, perfectly normal.
I dropped the exchange student at school this morning and as I watched her walk to class one of her friends appeared wearing a complete, head to toe unicorn outfit. Perfectly normal day
Changing Behaviour
When asked advice on confronting a past nemesis I said this to a to a female sports journalist experiencing sexism at work.
I told her that the usual 3 step argument wont work :
i.e. X is wrong, you did X, you are wrong.
He'll get defensive and may just lash out.
I told her to lay out the offensive behaviour, then say,
When the other journos are making cracks like that, and you laugh along or just brush it off as a bit of fun, it makes me feel like you don't value my contribution, you don't care what offence this causes and you want to send a clear signal to women to stay away from this workplace and newspaper.
Now, I know you better than to think this is deliberate so can we do something here to move forward?"
The sexist remarks stopped forthwith and she got a raise.
In a nutshell, 1, behaviour 2, effects 3, move on with a positive step forward.
Mrs Me tells me that my inspired wisdom is pretty standard conflict resolution practice. Such is life.
I told her that the usual 3 step argument wont work :
i.e. X is wrong, you did X, you are wrong.
He'll get defensive and may just lash out.
I told her to lay out the offensive behaviour, then say,
When the other journos are making cracks like that, and you laugh along or just brush it off as a bit of fun, it makes me feel like you don't value my contribution, you don't care what offence this causes and you want to send a clear signal to women to stay away from this workplace and newspaper.
Now, I know you better than to think this is deliberate so can we do something here to move forward?"
The sexist remarks stopped forthwith and she got a raise.
In a nutshell, 1, behaviour 2, effects 3, move on with a positive step forward.
Mrs Me tells me that my inspired wisdom is pretty standard conflict resolution practice. Such is life.
Breakfast in America
I have done quite a lot of travelling and a fair bit of that is in the USA. So far I have been to 20 US states plus DC and I have some observations to share.
On my first trip there, I was in Louisiana and I was getting sick of eating fried foods. The restaurants I could afford to eat in, seemed to do little else. One morning I was looking at a menu and saw, an ad - "2 eggs any style $5". So I asked the waitress for poached eggs on toast. She looked at me as if I had asked for boiled elephant trunk and went away. On her return she said the chef couldn't do that. Thinking to myself about what sort of chef can't boil water, I opted for scrambled. I happened to be passing the kitchen while he was cooking my breakfast and watched him prepare it.
He cracked two eggs on the griddle - yep he was frying them- and then got the scraper thing he used to move the shit called 'scrapple' around and aggressively chopped up the fried egg and plopped the resultant mess onto a plate.
I have no idea whether this is a normal variant of scrambled, but it tasted as bland and ordinary as the fried stuff I have had for the previous week. It bore no resemblance to the light fluffy yellow stuff I expect from scrambled eggs and didn't satisfy my need to not eat fried for a day or so.
The next day I decided I'd have some fruit and cereal, so I headed for a supermarket. What an eye opener. There was an entire wall given to bread, and a huge bank of milk products with the biggest plastic bottles of milk I had ever seen. Surely the milk would sour before a family reached the bottom? And the varieties amazed me. I felt like asking a staff member (if there was one to be found) "Which one is just milk?" I found the cereal and went off looking for fruit. Now this wasn't some ma and pa corner store, this was a big supermarket. There was zero fruit anywhere and the vegetable department could fit in my bedroom. There was nothing to cook with! Just stuff to open, thaw or microwave, boxes and boxes of processed food.
Sometime later I stayed with a friend in Las Vegas (oops I forgot Nevada, 21) and I was in her kitchen cleaning her pistol (as you do) when I noticed that the cooktop was remarkably clean, pristine even. A glance into the oven showed it had plastic on the racks and some paperwork as well, manuals and guarantees I suppose. So I said "New stove?" And then she told me it was new when she moved in 2 years ago. It had never been used. Just about then it was time to feed her six year old. A TV dinner was taken from the freezer (also the biggest I had seen outside a pub) and microwaved, a plastic cup of some plastic dessert was added with plastic knife, fork and spoon (which she inexplicably called 'silverware') and that was her dinner.
We had frozen pizza.
Sometime later I was to have a heated discussion with another woman who insisted that unpacking a frozen pizza and heating in the microwave was 'cooking'.
By far the best breakfast I had in America was in the Las Vegas casino, Circus Circus. The chef made omelettes in front of you with all the fresh ingredients you could want at a ridiculously low price. Dinner and lunches are a whole new story. :)
On my first trip there, I was in Louisiana and I was getting sick of eating fried foods. The restaurants I could afford to eat in, seemed to do little else. One morning I was looking at a menu and saw, an ad - "2 eggs any style $5". So I asked the waitress for poached eggs on toast. She looked at me as if I had asked for boiled elephant trunk and went away. On her return she said the chef couldn't do that. Thinking to myself about what sort of chef can't boil water, I opted for scrambled. I happened to be passing the kitchen while he was cooking my breakfast and watched him prepare it.
He cracked two eggs on the griddle - yep he was frying them- and then got the scraper thing he used to move the shit called 'scrapple' around and aggressively chopped up the fried egg and plopped the resultant mess onto a plate.
I have no idea whether this is a normal variant of scrambled, but it tasted as bland and ordinary as the fried stuff I have had for the previous week. It bore no resemblance to the light fluffy yellow stuff I expect from scrambled eggs and didn't satisfy my need to not eat fried for a day or so.
The next day I decided I'd have some fruit and cereal, so I headed for a supermarket. What an eye opener. There was an entire wall given to bread, and a huge bank of milk products with the biggest plastic bottles of milk I had ever seen. Surely the milk would sour before a family reached the bottom? And the varieties amazed me. I felt like asking a staff member (if there was one to be found) "Which one is just milk?" I found the cereal and went off looking for fruit. Now this wasn't some ma and pa corner store, this was a big supermarket. There was zero fruit anywhere and the vegetable department could fit in my bedroom. There was nothing to cook with! Just stuff to open, thaw or microwave, boxes and boxes of processed food.
Sometime later I stayed with a friend in Las Vegas (oops I forgot Nevada, 21) and I was in her kitchen cleaning her pistol (as you do) when I noticed that the cooktop was remarkably clean, pristine even. A glance into the oven showed it had plastic on the racks and some paperwork as well, manuals and guarantees I suppose. So I said "New stove?" And then she told me it was new when she moved in 2 years ago. It had never been used. Just about then it was time to feed her six year old. A TV dinner was taken from the freezer (also the biggest I had seen outside a pub) and microwaved, a plastic cup of some plastic dessert was added with plastic knife, fork and spoon (which she inexplicably called 'silverware') and that was her dinner.
We had frozen pizza.
Sometime later I was to have a heated discussion with another woman who insisted that unpacking a frozen pizza and heating in the microwave was 'cooking'.
By far the best breakfast I had in America was in the Las Vegas casino, Circus Circus. The chef made omelettes in front of you with all the fresh ingredients you could want at a ridiculously low price. Dinner and lunches are a whole new story. :)
Being mean to the French girl.
Sometimes I am mean. Our exchange student is watching Lord of the Rings trilogy and is about half way through. She keeps asking what will happen, and I wont tell. - Mostly because I don't remember the details. After one further lot of questions, I looked at the screen and said "Did you find out which one is gay yet?" "It's Sam isn't it? I think it's Sam!"
Cheese makers in Salt Lake City
I have visited Salt Lake City, twice, and found it extremely weird. On entering the compound ( I don't know what else you would call it) which is at the corner of that uniquely American address of first and first, I was greeted by a pretty young woman, who offered to show me around.
We walked and talked and she showed me the various buildings and explained their function. In one there was a Book of Mormon on a little shelf. She was showing it to me, and in the introduction there is a pic of a clay tablet with some writing on it. Now, I cannot remember the exact claim the book made about the pic, but it was clearly Assyrian cuneiform, in style at least, and not what she or it claimed. When i pointed this out she metaphorically stuck her fingers in her ears and said 'lalalalala' The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one.
The strangest building was circular and 2 or 3 stories high. Inside is hollow and a ramp winds its way around the inside of the building to the top floor. There on the top floor is a humongous statue of Jesus and a loudspeaker repeats the sermon on the mount, over and over again. The walls are sky blue with fluffy clouds dotted around. The blue sky gets darker and darker as you get higher until it is black and little stars appear. The idea is that that we are ascending into heaven. However, the clouds don't stop. They actually painted clouds in space! And not the clouds you see in Hubble pics, the same fluffy white ones you see in a Salt Lake City sky.
She left when I started laughing and it echoed through the building and drowned out Jesus talking about the cheese makers.
We walked and talked and she showed me the various buildings and explained their function. In one there was a Book of Mormon on a little shelf. She was showing it to me, and in the introduction there is a pic of a clay tablet with some writing on it. Now, I cannot remember the exact claim the book made about the pic, but it was clearly Assyrian cuneiform, in style at least, and not what she or it claimed. When i pointed this out she metaphorically stuck her fingers in her ears and said 'lalalalala' The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one.
The strangest building was circular and 2 or 3 stories high. Inside is hollow and a ramp winds its way around the inside of the building to the top floor. There on the top floor is a humongous statue of Jesus and a loudspeaker repeats the sermon on the mount, over and over again. The walls are sky blue with fluffy clouds dotted around. The blue sky gets darker and darker as you get higher until it is black and little stars appear. The idea is that that we are ascending into heaven. However, the clouds don't stop. They actually painted clouds in space! And not the clouds you see in Hubble pics, the same fluffy white ones you see in a Salt Lake City sky.
She left when I started laughing and it echoed through the building and drowned out Jesus talking about the cheese makers.
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